From Machiavelli to the present, thinkers have distinguished between the adept elite and the incompetent many. We may think that anyone who draws such a distinction and in such terms can be no friend to democracy; that is not true. On Politics: A History of Political Thought: From Herodotus to the Present (2012)
We are very attached to describing ourselves as the Greeks described themselves; try persuading a friend that the United States is not really a democracy. But it is not clear that their ideals, and ambitions, and the assumptions embodied in that vocabulary, or the views on the best way to govern ourselves of those who created that vocabulary, make much sense in a world as different as ours. On Politics: A History of Political Thought: From Herodotus to the Present (2012)